About

The growing monopoly

There is almost a monopoly now. A monopoly on consumer apps in Europe. It’s not about one company having it, it’s about one single country.

When all big companies in a market are from a non European country, it’s a foreign monopoly, even if the companies are competing with each other. That country is making very good apps and they are experts at marketing, that’s clear. The country is friendly, and even allied with Europe. The people are also friendly, yet, there is always an issue when a monopoly like this is growing.

One of the problems is that if this trend continues, it will put Europe in a weak position. Another problem is the growing number of ads. It’s already too many annoying ads and at the same time those who buy ads pay too much.

What Europe need is many small and medium sized companies. We need a healthy mix of local and foreign companies, with up to about 250 employees, all making consumer apps. We need to save our advertising market and make sure that no single country have a monopoly, that could potentially be abused.

A decent, relatively small social network

Albin Apps is aiming for micro size with about 3 people. If that goes well, we can then slowly grow to 10 people, that should be enough to run a decent, relatively small social network.

You do the math, 1.99€ per month with a lot of people paying 0.99€, because they learned some tricks. Three employees. How many paying members is needed? Not many.

That could work

But it only works if we also make it free, for the majority of people who always want free. Pay for no ads and no data collection. Pay to challenge the monopoly.

It’s worth it to be on a social network run by a European company and 1.99€ is a reasonable amount. Your friends, who don’t care as long as it’s free, also get what they want. You don’t pay for them, the ads pay for them.

That could work, what do you think?

Core of early supporters

Try it, then become a paying member before we even have ads to turn off. That’s the best way to prove that you’re really interested. It’s like a coffee a month for a good cause.

It’s a way of crowd bootstrapping a small company. Our app is not the best, but it’s good enough to start with and almost anything is long term better than a foreign monopoly. It’s not getting better without any money, so a core of paying members is needed. To find this core we ask you to mention Albin.social to a couple of your friends. Perhaps they are one of those early members?

Or just try it for free, we don’t have your address book, so it’s up to you to bring your friends for a test drive.